As winter thaws and spring and summer bring warmer temperatures and lifted spirits, expect your customers to search for the best and brightest tableware and accessories. Guide their urge to decorate with iridescent bowls perfect for fresh appetizers, tumblers that tickle the hand, and coasters that bring the outdoors to the table.

It’s nothing new to sell products based on the merits of fine handmade American craft and the stories of its makers. Husband-and-wife team Ben and Kate Gatski have helped retailers do that since they launched Gatski Metal in 2003, creating colorful sculptures hand-cut and -welded from recycled farm machinery.

But the Gatskis took their venture a few steps further in October, when they launched the online store The Steel Fork. The new business is based on the French concept of goût de terroir, which the Gatskis interpret to mean “the taste of the soil.”

Jason Green was in his fifth year of studying towards an economics doctoral degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder when he hit a wall. “I realized I needed to be making things with my hands,” he explains. Although he’d never worked with wood, he was naturally attracted to it, and found a local furniture maker who offered classes in 2003. That led to an intensive 12-week course at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, Maine. At that point, he says, “I knew I could do this for the rest of my life.”